A professors-rights group has issued a new report recommending that faculty members seeking employment should consider the University of Colorado only as a “last resort” because, it alleges, the dismissals of two faculty members were unjust and violated academic freedom.

In the report issued this month, the Colorado Conference of the American Association of University Professors criticizes CU-Boulder for not renewing the 2007 contract of Phil Mitchell, an instructor in the Sewall Residence Program, and for firing Ward Churchill, a tenured professor in the ethnic studies department. CU officials fired Churchill in 2007 after an academic misconduct investigation.

The owners of Boulder’s Sterling University Peaks apartments, who this summer were cited for illegally subdividing 92 bedrooms in the complex, have reached an agreement to settle the case for $410,000, the city announced Thursday.